The New Verse News presents politically progressive poetry on current events and topical issues.

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Thursday, May 31, 2007

It is not dream that troubles you, the self assured. At night, you do not stand After difficult descent Among accusing shades Of soldiers sent to sacrifice Who murmur of incompetence, Hungry for the world they left. Neither the blinded, crippled, blasted dead, Nor the legless, armless wounded rise from beds To surround you in your sleep. They do not speak within the words you speak:

You move and talk and lookAs though you were an empty gloveUpon the hand of a puppeteer.

Michael Graves is a widely published poet and has a full-length collection Adam and Cain (Black Buzzard, 2006) nominated for a PEN Osterweil Award. Graves was the recipient of a substantial grant from the Ludwig Vogelstein Foundation in 2004.

Mary Ann Mayer lives in Sharon, Massachusetts. Her first book of poems, Telephone Man, was published in 2005. Her work has appeared in two anthologies, is forthcoming in the online journals Shit Creek Review and Umbrella, and in Raven Chronicles themed issue, Citizen, Subject, Slave. Before turning to poetry, she practiced occupational therapy for thirty years.

Tuesday, May 29, 2007

The Creation Museum, a project of the socially conservative religious organization Answers in Genesis, mocks evolutionary science and invites visitors to find faith and truth in God. It welcomes its first paying guests -- $19.95 for adults, $9.95 for children, not counting discounts for joining a mailing list -- just weeks after three Republican presidential candidates said they do not believe in evolution.

Opinion polls suggest that about half of Americans agree. They dismiss the scientific theory that all beings have a common ancestor, believing instead that God created humans in one glorious stroke.

--Washington Post | May 27, 2007

Of course he, or she, or it didn’t know enoughto make nature seamless so we could tracehow atoms went to molecules, molecules to peptides.Too stupid to make it work intricatelywithout a clumsy “intelligent design” hand fumbling the plan.

Of course he, or she, or it couldn’t figure out in advancewhether this fertile egg was destined to venture living.No, it’s easy to mess up his, or her, or its plan,so easy that you have to call it sin.

Oh especially sin to fight deathor to trace root complexities of its opposite.Oh, where would mystery be?You have to have mystery!

And he, or she, or it never made anything higher than the moonwhich is why we shouldn’t build golden ships.Galaxies are just fuzz; that’s the way it should be.The universe is oh say a hundred miles high.Forget Mars, comets, stars.

That’s it. He, or she, or it wouldn’t have skillto make it so you’d never see fingerprints.

Nothing is bigger, more complex, or olderthan you imagine. That would be blasphemy.

Or is it just that you have to make him, or her, or itsmaller and stupider than you are, so you get to explainthe meaning of everything, to keep our heads bowedlower than yours, so we revere younot himor heror it.

Mary Turzillo's “Mars Is no Place for Children” won the 1999 Nebula, and An Old-Fashioned Martian Girl, her first novel, appeared in Analog. Among other magazines, Asimov's, F& SF, Cat Tales, Interzone, SF Age, Weird Tales, Oceans of the Mind, Electric Velocipede, and Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet have published her fiction and poetry. Your Cat & Other Space Aliens, her poetry collection, will appear from vanZeno press this year. An Emeritus Professor at Kent State University, she founded Cajun Sushi Hamsters and has taught in NASA's Science through Arts. Her favorite people include her son, Jack Brizzi, Jr., and her husband, writer-scientist Geoffrey A. Landis. Website: www.maryturzillo.com.

Sunday, May 27, 2007

Of last spring's lambs, at ease by the shed,the brown ram will not go in for frost-soft apples,not for grain, and it's this one pisses the fruit,the thickened chard I've strewn on the ground,and still butts the oblong bag of the one big ewe,his eyes so dark and wide-set that he looks at nothing,takes it all in with dead, dis-focused confidence,stamps a delicate hoof, veers, moiling as ifhe knows I intend to kill him, as if I were God.He shoulders through the flock as he pleases,tosses dollar leaves in the air while othersare keen to climb the ramp. This one must be first, caught, cut, bled and taken to the hoist.The rest will sleep, graze, calm, once he is.

Paul Nelson is gainfully retired as Prof.of English and Director of Creative Writing for Ohio University, five books, many magazines, AWP Award for Poetry, NEA Fellowship, now trolling off the North Shore of O'ahu.

Wednesday, May 23, 2007

Let them come like priests in white robes and tenderly cleanse the buttocks of the four-year-old who shat in his pants, pressing his ears against the scream of F16s flying low over Gaza

Order them up for the smashed skull at Haditha, the intestines’ spill out of back wounds, the graffiti-scrawled house where “democracy assassinated a family”

Let them restore the “accidentally” killed children fleeing on the road from Marwaheen, obeying blasting loudspeakers into their deaths

Order them up for the spattered mall, the hall, the checkpoint, the crossing, the wall

Order them up for the broken-necked girlfriend, left to drown in their tub by the returning Marine Order them up for his crazed pain

Order them up for the port-a-potty splattered with blood-- any soldier’s whose wife’s “bad news” is the last strain

Let them “with utmost respect” take down the three “smart,” “creative,” “committed” prisoners who hanged themselves with bedsheets and clothes in Guantanamo, their act “not desperation” but “warfare waged against us”

Let them remove the bindings around the necks, the plastic bags over the heads, let them wash out the shot-through mouths of men revenged, let them re-leaf the golden dome

Let the war presidents and prime ministers and militia leaders, for whom war is holy or righteous, abstract, mathematical, even joyous, somehow made clean in the mind, be each given one small toothbrush, and the sentence: scour this blood.

Judy Kronenfeld has taught in the Creative Writing Department at UC Riverside since 1984. She is the author of a book and two chapbooks of poetry, the most recent being Ghost Nurseries(Finishing Line, 2005), as well as a book on Shakespeare, King Lear and the Naked Truth (Dule, 1998) Recent anthology appearances include Red, White & Blues: Poets on the Promise of America (Iowa, 2004), Regrets Only: Contemporary Poets on the Theme of Regret (Little Pear Press, 2006), and Blue Arc West: An Anthology of California Poets (Tebot Bach, 2006). Her poems, as well as the occasional short story and personal essay, have appeared in numerous print and online journals; her most recent poem credits include DMQReview (Disquieting Muses Quarterly), Spoon River Poetry Review, Free Lunch, 2RiverReview, Pebble Lake Review, and Poetry International.

What if plenty were enough, the crowded mouthof one relieved by another too tired, too hungry to speak?What if Jesus hadn't been such a loser,had made disciples middlemen? Imagine breadand fish wrangled, wrung through sweetheart pacts--the profit crops, women and wine dealt, in the end,to an elite few, while thousands grovel on hotand dusty shores, swept away,in time, by a sea of shimmering opulence.

Michelle Bitting has work forthcoming or published in Glimmer Train, Swink, Prairie Schooner, Poetry Daily, Narrative, Small Spiral Notebook, Nimrod, The Southeast Review, Many Mountains Moving, Passages North, The Comstock Review, Poetry Southeast, Vox, Rattle, Gargoyle and others. She has won the Glimmer Train, Rock & Sling Virginia Brendemeuhl Award and Poets On Parnassus Poetry Competitions. Formerly a dancer and a chef, she volunteers extensively with the hungry and homeless. She lives in Los Angeles with her husband, actor Phil Abrams, and their two children. Visit her website. She says, "At this point, I write because I have to. There is just no other way to survive."

Monday, May 21, 2007

Leave it to the newspapers to get it all wrong. He was pulling therowboat behind his car. But he didn't run the light, he was turningthe corner. The trailer lurched when he hit a pothole, and it mighthave dented a car parked near the corner. He didn't stop to look.His wife was slumped next to him in the front seat, having troublebreathing. They never made it past Columbia PresbyterianHospital, let alone to that lake up in Westchester. By the time theticket reached him she was in a coma. He read it to her, mixed inwith get well cards from their friends and neighbors, but sheshowed no reaction so, he doesn't know, maybe he just left it thereon the windowsill, maybe he tossed it into the trash. She's the onewho filed everything neatly, paid the bills on time, sent donationsto the PBA, the Police Athletic League, and the Red Cross.

Rochelle Ratner's latest poetry books include Leads (Otoliths Press, 2007), Balancing Acts(Marsh Hawk Press, 2006), Beggars at the Wall (Ikon, 2006) and House and Home (Marsh Hawk Press, 2003). She is the author of fifteen previous poetry collections and two novels (Bobby’s Girl and The Lion’s Share) both published by Coffee House Press). More information and links to her writing on the Internet can be found on her homepage.

Prepare the intrigue by removing the gall bladder from a blanched Attorney General John Ashcroft in hospital; marinate with sedatives.

Add a dash of Bourne-brand thrillers.

Separate two or three yokels—a Card and a Gonzales will suffice, though any number of others with same textures and fermenting qualities would do for a pinch—from the White House since the President and the Rove should remain tasteless in this recipe.

Arrange yokels onto a bed of Ashcroft, there to rise with the pale signature of Ashcroft on to prolong illegal wiretapping and other surveillance procedures.

Take care not to allow a drop of Comey to enter the bed of Ashcroft prior to the addition of the yokels, for Comey will harden the Ashcroft against the normal action of the yokels.

Results will vary with this recipe and may not be evident for three or more years after preparation. Some ingredients such as the Alberto and Card may lose their fermentation. Card may no longer rise to the level of Chief of Staff, having been removed from the White House pantry, and the memory enzymes of the Alberto, serving subsequently itself as Attorney General, may conveniently perish. Further complications that may hinder full enjoyment of this dish: if the fomenter---Rove---is asked to testify in any Congressional hearings, it doubtless will rise to the occasion and fail to provide enough fermentation to suit the House's appetites. Ultimately, most diners during this political season may find the dish filled with maggots and learn to choose more carefully the commander-and-chef.

Earl J. Wilcox founded The Robert Frost Review, which he edited for more than a decade. His poetry was recently nominated for a Pushcart Prize.

like kindergarteners caught in a FreddyKrueger film. All that we needed to do:find the one-armed economist somewhere

between ad coelum et ad infernos,to drive us in his special purpose vehicle,fueled by CAT bonds, out of the nightmare

on Wall Street to the efficient frontierwhere we learn minimum wages did not meanto cause joblessness, nor was it intended

that increased fuel economy causes death.We hope at last it’s there near the endof our exquisitely short attention span

where we find equilibrium, i.e. the pointof no regrets, where we dig up the blackbox for judging, found with the recipe:

put in the facts, add a notion or twoof law, shake well, the answer tumbles out.On the other hand, even if the box

is not found, we will exist there, consoledby this new way of thinking (rememberthinking like a lawyer, the ornament

of argument, wretched proofs of our gift),knowing that the cost of living has notyet diminished its popularity.

Charles Reynard serves as a Circuit Court Judge in Central Illinois . His poems have appeared on WGLT Public Radio’s Poetry Radio, also in the anthology Where We Live: Illinois Poets (edited by Kathleen Kirk, 2003), the 2004 Emily Dickinson Awards anthology by Universities West Press, the literary journals AfterHours, Crab Orchard Review, Kaleidowhirl(on-line), as well as National Catholic Reporter. He is co-editor (with Judith Valente) of Twenty Poems to Nourish Your Soul (2005, Loyola Press). He was a finalist for the Gwendolyn Brooks Award for emerging poets in 2003 and a recipient of a Jo-Anne Hirshfield Memorial Poetry Award in 2007.

Dark matter is not readily visible because it neither emits nor reflects light or truthful radio signals. Its existence explains anomalies seen in the motion and direction of the administration. Dark matter can be detected only indirectly, e.g., through the bending of light and truth. Dark matter may consist of dust, mirrors, and roving gas formed of ordinary matter, or of vice-presidential MACHOs [Massive Astrophysical Compact Halo Objects], nonluminous bodies such as burned-out stars, black holes, and intellectual dwarfs; the discovery of a large concentration of white dwarfs in the halo surrounding the White House indicates that these burned-out stars could represent as much as a third of the dark matter in the administration.

Other theories hold that dark matter is made of subsidiary particles that played a key role in the formation of the administration, possibly the low-mass theoretical particles called WIMPs [Weakly Interacting Massive Particles]; these may be the so-called cold dark matter found as clumps in cabinet positions throughout the administration. Clumps have been found in two distinct regions: around a powerful office in the center of the State Department and, in larger amounts, around the entire Justice Department.

This suggests that the slower, cold dark matter might form the smaller clumps associated with the cabinet while the faster, hot dark matter might form the larger clumps associated with the administration as a whole.

Computer simulations of the formation of the administration favored the cold dark matter but tended to predict the formation of too many disastrous decisions when compared to the observed universe. This led to the postulation of warm dark matter, in an attempt to resolve the simulation problems. Unlike cold dark matter, which has mass but virtually no velocity or temperature, or hot dark matter, which has mass and is highly energetic, warm dark matter has mass and a low temperature corresponding to an extremely low velocity.

Wednesday, May 16, 2007

Some people still drive wedges,chop wood, incineratefor their own warmth.

Those on sallow roads,jingling like chains or pocket changewith nothing elsein the back of their mindsever since.

These logs,still burn in homeswith sooted caves.Their change, now a keyboard clicking,not like it used to be.We have come so far.

We can see color over the radioand ourselves on screens.

Perhaps, when we’re done with trees,and have abandoned our typing skills,we’ll all have huddled together,drawn inward,by some fancy new central heat.

Noah C. Renn is a student of English and Philosophy at Old Dominion University. He has had his poetry published in volumes 3 & 4 of Channel Marker and has had non-fiction published in Cezanne's Carrot where he won the editor's prize.

Tuesday, May 15, 2007

As the crow flies it is 6211 milesfrom Washington, D.C. to downtown Baghdad.Every 3,000 milesI change the oil in my truck.Pouring the used oil into a containerthe funnel tips over splashing oil upon the coldNew England ground.Small puddle of oil,dim reflection of a manprayingfor the wings of a crow.

Charlie Mehrhoff has sent out little work in the past decade. Survival issues. However, he was recently featured in ORIGIN2, Sixth Series. Crafting the Word is a Web site window into his work.

Monday, May 14, 2007

a lovely Jack, oval, silk-silver, sickle taila paring of one pound moon, like the oneI hooked in the same water, sixty years ago.

He hauls the papio, flopping from the surf,drops his rod, drops upon it, eye to eye,its weight quivering in his relentless grip and thrill,what we expect of boys, the right of first kill.

Had he slowly pinched the hook from its jaw,slid it quivering to water, watched it swim away,would we send him, or let him go?

Paul Nelson is gainfully retired as Professsor of English and Director of Creative Writing for Ohio University. Five books; many magazines; AWP Award for Poetry; NEA Fellowship; now trolling off the North Shore of O'ahu.

Sunday, May 13, 2007

On Mother’s Day, across the wide, round world,Wise Ones gather on bustling urban street corners,in flower-laden parks, in school yards lacedwith the laughter of children,on mountaintops, and pasturelands brimmingwith bleating sheep, grazing cows.South to north, east to west, they askfor five sacred minutes of silence to save the world.

Grandmas, Nanas, Abuelas, Nonne, Grands-mères.

Their bodies cradle life’s blessings and burdens,their bones bear the memory of childbirth,their breasts recall the tender lips of suckling infants,their hands, stained with the salty residue of tears,tremble with compassion.

Those whose wombs have borne the wealth of ageslabor now to banish violence from every home,birth a globe where fear and war are obsolete.

Asking only five meager minutes of silence,they implore us to stand strong beside them,before our world-weary legs can no longerbear the many sorrows of our planet.

Great and silent, the Grandmothers urge usto gather our courage, impart 300 seconds of peace,pledge our hearts to a different path,honor our children, whose fragile lives dependon how well we are able to mendthe deep, round Mother-soul of the world.

Friday, May 11, 2007

Is it possible for a country to run out of people?Every day in a country I prefer not to name 30,40, or 50 people are killed in various ways. Is itpossible that one day the last surviving native of

the country gets killed and there's no one left? Well,maybe the killer, but then he would probably moveto an adjacent counry because there'd be no one aroundto grow food. What happens to the country then?

Does the land it was on get squashed by surroundingcountries? And what if a foreign force is occupyingthe country and the force suddenly finds there aren'tany natives left to understand their country is being

liberated, and, in fact, the liberators have becomeits only inhabitants? I guess the liberators can thendeclare the country part of their country. But that movecould upset other countries and then the liberators

could begin losing 30, 40, or 50 people a day untilthere are none of them left either. This rumination isridiculous. Even in a full-scale war not all the peoplein a country get killed. There are plenty of people.

Stan Marcus's poems have appeared in The Virginia Quarterly Review, Stand, The Journal of New Jersey Poets, Poetry East, The Literary Review, Prairie Schooner, The Minnesota Review, North Dakota Quarterly, Denver Quarterly, College English, The Hampden-Sydney Poetry Review, Confrontation, Permafrost, GW Review, Ironwood, Kansas Quarterly, and other periodicals, and online at The New Verse News and The Pedestal Magazine. Two of his poems were included in the anthology For a Living—The Poetry of Work, published by the University of Illinois Press.

Thursday, May 10, 2007

Cherry Hill. The closest New Jersey town to Philadelphia. If you didn't count Camden. And slum-laden Camden didn't count back in the 1960s. One of the first honest-to-god malls she ever saw was in Cherry Hill. It was there she bought the charm she pretended her high school boyfriend bought. The Latin Casino was there. Her uncle promised to take her someday.

Cherry Hill. The suburbia of her childhood dreams and adult nightmares. But she doesn't often have nightmares. That's where she chose to set some scenes in her novel. She and her husband spent the day at the mall, recording the names of stores, staring at teenagers. They asked the clerk in a record store where to go for dinner, and were directed to the first Olive Garden they'd heard about, not knowing it was a chain, not expecting the crowd from that day's high school football game. They filled up on garlic bread but the pasta made them slightly queasy. They should have just gone to some local dive for subs, or pizza.

Rochelle Ratner's latest poetry books include Balancing Acts(Marsh Hawk Press, 2006), Beggars at the Wall (Ikon, 2006) and House and Home (Marsh Hawk Press, 2003). She is the author of fifteen previous poetry collections and two novels (Bobby’s Girl and The Lion’s Share) both published by Coffee House Press). More information and links to her writing on the Internet can be found on her homepage.

Wednesday, May 09, 2007

My father calls to makesure I'm ok, his voicean awkwardstar in the constellation of darkmiles between us. In ourpatchwork family, he is theone kneeling in the corner,examining these stripswhich used to holdtogether, as if tight knots wouldnever come undone. Hean observer while my motheropened herself for the feeding.My father the immigrantwants me to take cautionin a country where he has learnedhow to be lonely.Out of his mouth swims a name from the AsianAmerican textbook of my past –Vincent Chin.Do you know the man mistaken,beaten to death?Yes, I say.But these are stark lessons he has nevertaught me –his own jobs not won,which dreams he has left.We never speak of these things.Tonight,he is singing a lamentfor those families without second chances,for men who sit in the darknesswith no one living in their hearts,for a country he once believed could behis own,before all this.

A Kundiman fellow, Ching-In Chen is the daughter of Chinese immigrants as well as a poet and community organizer. Her writing has been published in Growing Up Girl: Voices from Marginalized Spaces and is forthcoming in Tea Party and CRATE. You can find her at www.myspace.com/chingin.

An expressionless,emotionless, baby-facedyoung manwill do the job.Direct him to quietly crossa serene, well populatedsetting where heblends in with the crowd.Give him a gun.Inspire him to match itwith his steely intentionto kill, machine-like,indiscriminately.

Sound should be eerily silentexcept for the popsof the gun, the wails of thosehit and the shushing sound of writhing.Make sure the male wails are equalto the those of the females;it will take the audience, conditioned to expectwomen-shrieks,by complete surprise.

There are many options for endings.Have him capturedby a well-muscled, likable heroso that the audience cheers.Though it won’t feel quite like justice,at least there’s the remote possibilityof learning: “Why?”

Or:Have him take his own lifeand let viewers simmer between feelinghe got what he deserved,and he got better than he deserved.

Or:Better yet, let him live on,eluding arrest, leaving behinda slew of bodies and the threatthat he’ll be back.Because evil always comes back,doesn’t it?And an audience is always on the lookoutfor a good sequel.

Tracey Paradiso writes all manner of business copy by day and poetry by night. She has studied with poets Sharon Olds and Carol Frost. Tracey resides in Cranford, New Jersey with her husband, Jerry and their two children.

Tuesday, May 08, 2007

Energized by epiphanies and electoralcollegiality Skeleton meanderedin his garden, communing with roses.He no longer wore his ten-gallonhat (which actually held three quarts).Only Nosey, the newsboy's dog, noticedSkeleton wore only his thin skin, dry bonesrattling within. Nosey, who knew athing or two about bones, barkeduntil guards, aids, came runningto wrap a robe around Skeleton. Butthere was a leak (it may have been Nosey).Yellow journalists cried. Skeleton'sstaff denied. Pundits prophesied.Security shuddered. The peopleworried about Erectile Dysfunctionand Restless Leg Syndrome.

Robert M. Chute’s book from JustWrite Books, Reading Nature, poetry based on scientific articles, is available from Amazon or Barnes and Noble.

Monday, May 07, 2007

She writes, she teaches, she gives a reading in Brooklyn. It's fifteen minutes late and even the organizer isn't here yet. The subways are a mess, she's told. She has a headache. The organizer arrives, trouble with the G train. She reads, she stays for jazz, gets home late, turns on the news. A transit worker was killed on the tracks in Brooklyn. She goes to bed with a headache, she writes, she teaches. One of her favorite students doesn't log in for the creative writing chat. She lies down with a monster headache. She gets up, drives thirty-five miles, teaches. She brings her headache home, checks her e-mail, there's a note from the student. She reads, preoccupied. For those who don't know: my husband died on Sunday, a worker struck on the subway tracks. She reads again, more slowly. She follows the link to a video, mostly on dangers subway workers face. This was the second worker killed within a week. Her student's husband was also a painter. She has a headache. She doesn't know what to write.

Rochelle Ratner's latest poetry books include Balancing Acts(Marsh Hawk Press, 2006), Beggars at the Wall (Ikon, 2006) and House and Home (Marsh Hawk Press, 2003). She is the author of fifteen previous poetry collections and two novels (Bobby’s Girl and The Lion’s Share) both published by Coffee House Press). More information and links to her writing on the Internet can be found on her homepage.

Sunday, May 06, 2007

inflated and rising.See him, Icarus Bush, the son,the tiniest speck ascendingthe heavens. In love withthe sun, stayin’ the course,making his run at the sun.

Your not-so-distant forebears, Icarus, includingyour Daedalas daddy, who so cunningly craftedthe House of Bush, crafted as well for you,son Icarus Dubya, a fine set of wingson which to soar: everywhereon the inside track, always moneyand connections to saveyour foolish young ass, governorof the Big Hat, and yes,then the Pres, most powerful manon this our planet. But strange, Icarus,just not enough for you,our oil-worshipping, hell-roaringCommander in Chief, anointed,you suggest, by God himself,and soaring nowfast toward Ol’ Sol.

It’s said your daddy warned you, Icarus Bush,mutedly to be sure, as the aging father must,warned you:

“Pshaw! Daddy. You just give a watch at me. I have a mandate to fly free, and I’m goin’ t’ use it. Watch meeeeee! I’m goin’ t’ do it. No matter what. I’m the big change on the wing!”

He’s way up there now, flyin’free on his mandate,our American eagleand the rest of us with him,barely a speck against the sun,feathers beginning nowto singe and smoke.

Almost to the sun!

Joe Paddock is a poet, oral historian, and environmental writer. He has been a Regional Poet for Southwestern Minnesota, a poet-in-residence for Minnesota Public Radio at Worthington, and has taught in the Creative Writing Department of the University of Minnesota. His books of prose include Soil and Survival (Sierra Club Books) and Keeper of the Wild (Minnesota Historical Society Press). His books of poetry include Handful of Thunder (Anvil Press), Earth Tongues (Milkweed Editions), Boars’ Dance (Holy Cow! Press), and A Sort of Honey (Red Dragonfly Press). For his poetry he has received the Lakes and Prairies Award of Milkweed Editions and the Loft-McKnight Award of Distinction.

Michael Graves is a widely published poet and has a full-length collection Adam and Cain (Black Buzzard, 2006) nominated for a PEN Osterweil Award. Graves was the recipient of a substantial grant from the Ludwig Vogelstein Foundation in 2004.

Saturday, May 05, 2007

Hours of playing riffson "Brother, can you spare a dime"have netted the busker his pint.He eyes a flock of starlingswondering how they would tastewith biscuits and gravy,and suddenly a new song beginsto pirouette in his mind, a songabout a murder of crowsmorphing into a giftfor the president's table, succulentas the best Greek horsemeat.

In the Oval Office the presidentsigns an executive order: "To himthat hath shall be given."In the Green Room the first ladyserves coffee and truffles to wivesof corpulent felines.In the Rose Garden the pressposes inconvenient questionsin reference to dirty laundry,and a suitably low-ranking aideends up with a snootfulof pâté de corbeau.

Esther Greenleaf Murer lives in Philadelphia. She has previously contributed to The NewVerseNews.

Friday, May 04, 2007

“As many as 50,000 women were raped during the war in Bosnia . During conflicts in West Africa thousands of young girls were kidnapped and forced into sexual slavery and prostitution. Rape is rampant in the Democratic Republic of Congo, where as in so many other places it is again being used as a weapon of war, a tactic used to terrorize, destroy and humiliate communities, its impact devastating." --The International Rescue Committee

Strong, calloused hands flew everywhere,grabbing baskets of grain, bowls brimmingwith ripe fruit, a jug of water on the table,the table itself; the red and yellow cloth her motherhad woven for her wedding day, torn and dirtiedby the soiled, greedy fingers of the men.Worldly goods were not enoughto fill the empty sockets of their souls;they blindfolded her eyes, gripped her arms,hauled her, her sisters, her daughters, her niecesaway from everything good they knew,twisted their hearts with horrors their tongues wept to describe,eviscerated their innocence, desecrated their lives;when the women dared to resistthe men shot bullets at their defiant heads;six torturers taught, by god knows who,to wage rape, inflict war where none is called for,for reasons no sane heart will never understand or accept;pain so brutal her skin cried out for mercy,and afterwards, they tossed her outlike rubbish, her body, the bodies of her female kin, too,strewn, like litter, along the roadsideleft to rot, until some kind hand—a compassionate manperhaps or a grieving woman—took the woundedwomen to the hospital; twelve hours latershe awoke in the bright womb of convalescence,remembering everything; her bruised mouth opened wideand howled for all the world to hear.

Mary Saracino is a novelist, poet, and memoir writer who lives in Denver , CO . Her latest novel, The Singing of Swans (Pearlsong Press 2006), was named a Lambda Literary Award finalist, in the Spirituality category. Visit www.pearlsong.com or www.marysaracino.com for more information.

Wednesday, May 02, 2007

The order of thingsnatural and contrivedis dissolving.Our laws serve injustice.Our streets are congestedwith the ill, the lost and the mad.Our hopes are upscale fashions.Our dreams are sleek electronics.

We have forgottenthe tremble fear of thunder,open fields of disobedient flowers,rain pattering on leafy shelter.Generations of citieshave stuntedthe order of things.

Gary Beck's poetry has appeared in dozens of literary magazines. His chapbook, The Conquest of Somalia, will be published by Cervena Barva Press. His recent fiction has been published in numerous literary magazines. His plays and translations of Moliere, Aristophanes, and Sophocles have been produced Off-Broadway.

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By submitting work to The New Verse News, each contributor is affirming that the work is entirely her/his own creation, that s/he owns the copyright to the work, that the work has not been previously published in print or posted online (including on personal blogs and social media or even on a private, password-protected location online), and that the work's publication in The New Verse News does not violate the rights of any publication, organization, or individual. The New Verse News thus requires and expects that each poem published herein is the original work of the person, named in the byline, who submits the poem, although it cannot guarantee that this is the case.

The writer retains all other rights to her/his work. The writer of a poem accepted by the editors will be informed of that acceptance simultaneously with the posting of the poem on site. The editors try to respond to submissions within a fortnight.

The New Verse News accepts multiple, but NOT simultaneous submissions. In general, the editors of The New Verse News try not to post the work of any one poet more than once in ten days.

The editors do not have the time to comment on poems submitted to The New Verse News. Even had we the time, we have found from unhappy experiences in the past that editorial feedback is too often the prompt for argument and too infrequently accepted as constructive. Decisions are based on the needs of the journal on any given day and are not at all meant to be judgements on the quality of submitted poems. Many poems rejected by The New Verse News have been eagerly accepted and published by other fine journals.

Poems published in The New Verse News generally remain available in the site's archives eternally or until a writer requests that her/his work be deleted.

The New Verse News wherever possible follows the practice invented, as far as we know, by Joyce Carol Oates to spell the name of the #FakePOTUS "T***p" so as to avoid soiling the site with an obscenity.

The Managing Editor of The New Verse News is James Penha. Interviews with him regarding the editorial policies of the journal are available at:DuotropeSix Questions